Coast Guard Removes “Hate Symbol” Designations Despite Assurances It Wouldn’t |
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The Coast Guard’s new workplace harassment manual, which no longer classifies nooses and swastikas as hate symbols, quietly went into effect on Monday.
The Washington Post was the first to report about the planned changes, in mid-November. The Trump White House derided that reporting as “false,” and just hours later — after the proposed updates were met with widespread outcry — military officials released a memo claiming that the symbols would remain banned.
However, that memo appears to have been ignored entirely in the new manual, which classifies swastikas and nooses not as overt hate symbols but only as “potentially divisive.”
The word “hate” now appears only three times within the manual. In one of those instances, the word is used to explain that “the terminology ‘hate incident’ is no longer present” in the Coast Guard’s policies.
The manual also notes that “any symbols or flags co-opted or adopted by hate-based groups as representations of supremacy, racial or religious intolerance, or other bias” are now to be treated as “potentially divisive symbols.”
The new manual also places restrictions on how higher-ups can respond to displays of what were........